Hans Hunziker

Hans Hunziker (1878 to 1941) was a Swiss psychiatrist who combined clinical neuropsychiatry with public health administration. He was professor of social medicine at the University of Basel and head of the Cantonal Health Office of Basel-Stadt. His doctoral thesis, written under Professor Paul Ernst and defended on 3 January 1906, dealt with brain tumours inside the ventricles. His later writing shows the breadth of his hygiene work: he published on the Basel typhoid epidemic of August 1931, on water as a carrier of disease germs, on the effect of the Kembs Rhine dam on Basel's sewage and groundwater, on hygiene for a new central cemetery, on hygiene teaching for teachers and pupils, and on the fight against quackery in Switzerland. He also wrote early papers on absinthe and on acardiacus amorphus.